3 
watched and frequently re-adjusted. They 
must he men of judgment and intelligence. 
“Snug, the joiner,” of Shakespeare’s com¬ 
edy, with his comic and gross stupidity, 
could not work with such a machine ten 
minutes without bringing himself or it to 
disaster. 
Indeed, boys, the reign of stupidity in 
every sphere of human activity is drawing 
to a close, and the lad who means to be 
anything or do anything effective in life 
must prepare to use his head as well as his 
hands. He must live and work up to the 
noble machinery which he will be. expected 
to handle and direct. 
I asked an excellent carpenter, a few 
days ago, what was the chief quality a boy 
must possess in order to become a good 
workman. He answered without an in¬ 
stant’s hesitation,— 
“Aptitude.” 
“But,” said I, “how can you or the boy 
himself tell whether he has aptitude or 
not ?” 
“Well,” said he, after duly scratching 
his wig, “one of the first things a boy 
wants to do, who has in him the making of 
a good carpenter, is to hammer, whittle, 
saw and chop. He likes to watch men who 
are at work with tools, and he has a good 
deal of curiosity about the tools themselves. 
By the time he is twelve years of age, un¬ 
less all his native sense and ingenuity have 
been schooled out of him, he will make a 
very good dog-house, bird-cage and rabbit- 
trap; put up a very respectable shelf for 
his mother in the store-room, and knock 
together a pretty good shed or summer¬ 
house for his sisters in the garden. He 
has a sort of relish for work and tools.” 
Such is the boy for a carpenter. The ad¬ 
vantages of carpentry are so obvious, and 
some slight degree of skill in it is so easily 
acquired, that it continually attracts the 
wrong boys as well as the right ones. In 
these days of sharp competition, the man 
thrives best who can do things which few 
can do, or can do common things in a 
superior way. 
If, therefore, you do not perceive in 
yourself any signs of “aptitude” for the 
carpenter’s trade; if you have no “relish” 
for good work and ingenious tools \ if you 
have not something of the mechanic’s 
peculiar patience, or power of keeping on 
without fret or worry, it is better to avoid 
the bench and try something which does 
not require these qualieties. 
Let us suppose, however, that after prop¬ 
er consideration, you have made up your 
mind to be a carpenter. How are you to 
get into the trade? 
A boy now, in a country place, on com¬ 
ing out of school at sixteen years of age, 
gets into carpentering in a very simple way. 
He stops at a carpenter’s shop and says 
perhaps to the master,— 
“I have worked with carpenter’s tools a 
little. My cousin is a carpenter, and I have 
been round his shop a good deal. Can you 
give me a job?” 
If it is a busy time, and the master wants 
hands, lie will try him for a day; “feel of 
him,” as a carpenter expressed it, “to find 
out what he is made of.” He will set the 
lad to helping a man make a picket-fence, 
one operation of which is digging holes for 
posts. Often, the first hole the boy digs 
decides his fate. If he has “gumption,” 
the hole will have two qualities that win 
respect. 
First, it will be straight; secondly, the 
minimum of earth will be displaced in dig¬ 
ging it. An unhandy boy will throw out 
four times the amount of dirt necessary; he 
will scatter that dirt all around; and. after 
all, the post may not stand upright in the 
hole. 
The boy that digs his first hole in that 
way is very likely to be told at the close of 
the day, that he is not wanted the next. 
He may be set to nailing on pickets, a very 
simple matter; only they must be put on 
straight, just so far apart, and just so high. 
A careful boy after nailing on six pickets 
under the eye of an experienced man, will 
make no more mistakes. 
He will soon learn to do easy work with 
certainty and rapidity. His merits will at 
once attract attention, because steadiness 
and patience are among the rarest qual¬ 
ities shown by boys of sixteen or seven¬ 
teen; and what an employer most wants is 
men who can be trusted to carry on a piece 
of work without superintendence. 
I heard a carpenter say recently,— 
